One of the screens that persuaded Hertz that something was going wrong on the website. The small car is shown as Unavailable pre-paid, yet it was available to non-members

07.12.2008 - Island Connections decided to take up the case and soon discovered that there were indeed several apparent anomalies in the company’s on-line booking system. The good news is that they are being looked at very carefully by Hertz at the highest level and if they have not been remedied already, they will be in the near future.

Part of the problem lay with the design of the information featured on the membership section of the site, particularly the My Profile page which requests details that have a major impact on the tariffs offered, not to mention vehicle availability. Customers are asked to accept or decline a range of insurance options, including Collision Damage Waiver, Theft Protection and Personal Accident Injury, and the choices made are stored in their profile for price quote purposes.

An easily-made (not to say overlooked) slip related to ‘vehicle preference’, because the first option available on the drop-down menu is not the cheapest model but an Economy-Automatic. Failure to amend this can result in smaller cars being listed as ‘unavailable’ at the pick-up location and, by default, pricier models (Ford Focus and above) appearing first on the screen.  Moreover, for some reason changes made to the options did not take effect until several screens -and several clicks on ‘Confirm’ buttons - later, at times giving customers a nasty price shock prior to clicking the final button to complete their booking. In a small number of cases also, quotes offered to Gold Club members were slightly higher than those offered to their ‘ordinary’ Hertz #1 Club counterparts. Island Connections spent several days making bookings on the Hertz website and produced detailed evidence that something was going wrong on the system. In the course of the comprehensive checks it emerged also that a customer’s country of residence can be a critical factor in determining the price charged, and even whether they can benefit from attractive pre-payment options carrying substantial discounts.

Armed with our ‘evidence’, we took the case to Hertz Europe Ltd and for nearly a week exchanged correspondence with the firm’s Director of Public Affairs, Zoë White, who, within hours of receiving our queries, tasked an in-house team with replicating the bookings done and assessing the findings.

To help her team, screen print-outs taken during the fictitious bookings, for which Island Connections created several new #1 Club Members, were supplied as examples of the anomalies. To the company’s credit, they acknowledged within less than 48 hours that a number of ‘bugs’ in the bookings system had been identified in the course of the checks and were the cause of anomalies such as - bizarrely- pre-paid tariffs that were actually higher than those available on the day to US citizens hiring a car at Madrid Airport. Hertz also acknowledged that in some cases ‘Unavailable’ flags were showing for certain pre-paid tariffs for Club members, even though the vehicles were actually available (as discovered when making non-member bookings).  Zoë White was extremely grateful for the “opportunity given to Hertz to rectify the flaws” and thanked Island Connections for sharing the findings of its random checks of the website bookings system. As a result of the investigation, Hertz intends to amend the wording of certain sections of its website to make sure #1 Club members are fully aware of the options open to them on the My Profile page and of the impact of any changes made. It also intends to modify the design of the site to ensure that changes made to profiles during a booking are reflected immediately, rather than towards the very end of the process.   “Your newspaper highlighted this and other technical issues which we were happy to address. We are very grateful to your publication and its readers, and always welcome and act upon suggestions for improvement from customers” said Zöe, who added that the pre-paid tariffs were gradually being made available to a wider range of countries.
By Karl McLaughlin

Gallery: Hertz acts on Island Connections probe

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